


Exchange

by swiddershins



Category: Neverwhere - All Media Types, Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Character Study, Gen, accidental slight canon divergence, baby baby baby marquis, baby marquis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 02:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14392434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swiddershins/pseuds/swiddershins
Summary: A boy procures a coat. Both of these things may later be significant.(Written as a birthday gift for ayelet-catbutt on tumblr)





	Exchange

The coat was elegant. It was beautiful. It had an imposing collar, a slit up the back, a myriad of pockets, and- more than any of those other things- it had  _style._ The boy had known it from the first moment he’d seen it, crammed among other, lesser goods in an unassuming market stall.

He wouldn't say the coat was meant to be his- that would imply destiny. The boy was half certain that there was no such thing, and wholly certain that if there were, he wanted nothing to do with it. But he would say that  _he_ meant for that coat to be his, and that was that. 

He’d inquired about the coat’s price, carefully careless. As if this was a matter of no importance, a passing curiosity. As if he didn’t see his future here, all wrapped up in leather the color of a wet street at midnight. 

“Nothing you can afford, kid,” the vendor had informed the boy roughly. The boy did not like being called  _kid._ He had not yet mastered the art of making other people see him the way he wished to be seen- once he had, he would be  _mister,_ perhaps, or perhaps even  _sir,_ or maybe  _you bastard,_ but never again  _kid._ Until then, though, people called him what they called him, and he gritted his teeth as if one of them might be cyanide this time. He spat on the tile between the vendor’s splayed feet, and continued to look at the coat anyways.

He pawed at the hems, checking for frayed edges. (There were none.) He ran his fingers over the seams and the lining, checking for pockets. (There were many.) He lifted the whole affair up by its shoulders, checking if it would fit him. (It wouldn’t, not yet.) Nothing he saw about the coat did anything to dispel his first impression of it- that it was elegant, it was beautiful, and it  _would_ be his.

“It’s a fine enough piece,” the boy said, bending his mouth around the understatement. “I’ll give you the ending of a story no one else’s ever heard for it.”

The vendor scoffed. “What, no one?”

“Excepting the author, I, and- if you take the offer- your fine self.”

The vendor scratched their chin, speculative. “What story? Not the one with the tiger in it?”

“The one and same.”

“No good. I don’t care for the bloody tiger or any story it’s gotten into. Anything else, kid?”

“A name, then,” The boy offered, too quickly. He bit his tongue, tried to gather himself, to sound like the kind of person who could be bartering for this coat. “I’ll trade you the name my own father gave me.”

“And what’d I want that for?”

“I don’t expect that’s any of my business.” 

“Hmph. Keep it.”

The boy looked at the coat again. No one, he thought, no one would call anyone wearing a coat like that  _kid._ He looked at the coat, and he looked at his own hands, and he looked at the vendor and he looked at the vendor’s teeth, half bared in a vague attempt at a salesperson smile. It did not reassure.

“A pound of flesh,” he said, and was gratified not to hear his own voice break.

“A what?”

“A pound of flesh. For the coat.”

There was a pause, and the boy tried a smile. The smile would have liked to have been easy and enormous, a glittering anchor stitched into the dullness of the world, but the boy hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet.

“Two.”

Hands were shaken. A short while and a quick journey to the butcher’s later, the boy left the market with haste and a new coat. It had an imposing collar and a slit up the back. It was the color of a wet street at midnight, and it was entirely too large for the boy now wearing it. He’d grow into it in time, and in the same way, he’d grow into his smile, and out of anyone ever calling him  _kid._ But as for what he’d be called next...  _mister_ and  _sir_ were unambitious in retrospect, and  _you bastard_ might do in a pinch, but was hardly a way to introduce yourself. No, he thought, as he left the hubbub of the market far behind, the hem of his coat brushing the filthy ground as he walked, trying out new steps, new poise. No, none of those names would do.

But he rather liked the sound of  _marquis._

**Author's Note:**

> and there he goes! it was fun trying to write a younger, less certain Marquis- trying to find similarities and differences between his younger self and the version of him that we see gallivanting around in canon. wild son of a gun sure loves his coat, though. comments are appreciated, as always!


End file.
